The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 17

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD THURSDAY. JUNE 5. 1997 Arts 17 FILM MILES FRANKLIN WINNER Tale of brotherly hatred JAXllX )) WJ Ml fVVaV) After 25 years of relative obscurity, David Foster has won the Miles Franklin Award. PAULSHEEHAN offers a guide to the work of a highly original mind. 4 jLJL.

EXCERPT THE GLADE AND THE GROVE HAT REMAINS of Attica's writes Plato in Critias, 'is like a skeleton of a body emaciated bv A taste of Foster NO WAY HOME Written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo Rated Chauvel NO Way Home is the third film in 18 months in which Tim Roth has played a convict, and he's not looking welL To go with his shaven head, he's adopted a sort of Neanderthal stoop shoulders hunched, jaw stuck out, expression wary as if marauding bears are not entirely out of the question. His character, Joey, is being released from a six-year stretch in Sing Sing, and flashback glimpses reveal that he hasn't had a very nice time. His future outside isn't shaping up too well either. When he arrives at the house where he was born and grew up, he finds that his front-door key doesn't fit any more. His supposedly fond big brother, Tommy (James Russo), has not only had the locks changed, he has a wife, Lorrain, and she's far from welcoming.

Instead of being given his old room back, Joey is assigned a bed in the basement with the rest of the junk. He takes this setback with surprising mildness, responding by helping with the dishes and getting a job washing windows. An increasingly sympathetic Lorrain (Deborah Kara Unger known to Australian audiences through her theatre, film and TV work here) calls him an enigma. The reasonably film-literate might be speculating further. A psycho, perhaps? After encouraging you to play with this thought for a while, writer-director Buddy Giovinazzo reveals that he was just kidding a manoeuvre which doesn't exactly promote confidence in his commitment to either his characters or theme, which eventually comes to rest on a case of sibling rivalry, replete with buried secrets and festering guilt The film was shot on Staten Island, last seen on screen as home to Melanie Griffiths in Working Girl Her neighbourhood was poor but respectable and it's clear that the Larabitos, too, were respectable once.

There are signs of more genteel times in the furniture left over from the brothers childhood. But these days, the ambient mood is set by Tommy's dealings in marijuana, which he weighs and bundles on the kitchen table. He and Lorrain make an odd couple for Staten Island. Wearing stubble and a singlet, sometimes augmented by shades and a back-to-front baseball cap, Russo comes across as a downmarket Bruce Willis, while Unger, with her ice queen looks, is like somebody stranded at the end of a fashion shoot. Roth's performance, in contrast, remains assiduously unglamorous.

When not standing around silently, making up his mind what to do next, he applies most of his energy to grappling with his Staten Island accent, which sounds as if he's speaking through a mouthful of marbles. Giovinazzo's direction is similarly slow-moving until the last half-hour when the Larabitos' kitchen becomes a battlefield in a blood-soaked, but strangely unexciting, finale. SANDRA HALL that Dog Rock and D'Arcy D'Oliveres should be the first step before attempting the depths of The Glide Within the Grove. D'Arcy shares many characteristics with David Foster. He is a postman, as Foster was.

He reads the classics in the original Latin, does Foster. He keeps bees. So does Foster. He lives in a country tow near Sydney. Foster lives in Bundanoon.

He has a cow. Foster has Trudy, which he milks every day. oster has always lived far outside the literary ghettos, and his intimate experiences with martial arts, with prawning in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and with the Aboriginal communities in the Top Lnd (he has a son who is initiated into one of the Aboriginal communities) are all reflected in one of his finest books. Males Of Mars. His interest in rock music for a while he was a drummer in a band is reflected in Plumbum, widely regarded as one of the best novels written about rock bands.

His sears as a runner and City to Surf' enthusiast help underpin the two novellas. Hitting Vie Wall He has written a novel about 14th-century religious figure in Ihe Adventures of Christian Rosy Crow. His interest in nature, history religion and philosophy underscores the rest of his works. His most ambitious book. The Glade Within the Groe.

grew out of his contacts ith the hippie communes of the 1960s and 1970s. "I lived on the fringes of the hippie-commune movement A lot of my friends got stuck into it in a big ay and tried to become self-sufficient. That movement has more or less disappeared now. The ferals have no real desire to be self-sufficient Their mood is much more cynical. I wanted to get the old mood down before it completely disappeared.

With the benefit of hindsight, it was a ise impulse but it was doomed to failure." IN SEVERAL interviews with the Herald before winning the Miles Franklin, he was disconsolate at the failure of his work to sell. "I must try to develop some sort of base of readers overseas. If I can't sell outside of this country I'm as good as dead I don't like promoting myself. I think it's immodest." He took solace in his favourite author and greatest literary influence, Juvenal, the Roman satirist who wrote in the 1st century AD. He reads Juvenal in the orignal Latin.

"Juvenal is to my taste. He wrote during a similar period to ours, a period of decline and decadence. I'd like to see Juvenal taught at university. He's rigorous, and there's a great lack of intellectual rigour in our education. "I find consolation in Juvenal's career.

He was unread in his own time. He was reduced at one point to a single manuscript That's a romantic story, that he survived, and became known 250 years after he died, to the point here he was the most widely anthologised author in the 12th century. That was a great comeback." disease, as compared with her original relief. All the rich, soft soil has moulted away, leaving a country of skin and bones There are mountains in Attica which can now keep nothing but bees, but which were clothed, not so long ago, with fine trees producing timber suitable for roofing the finest buildings; the roofs hewn from this timber are still in existence. The annual supply of rainfall was not lost, as it is at present, through being allowed to flow over the denuded surface to the sea, but was received by the country, in all its abundance, into her bosom, where she stored it in her impervious potter's earth and so was able to discharge the drainage of the heights into the hollows in the form of springs and rivers with an abundant volume and a wide territorial distribution.

The shrines that survive to the present day on the sites of extinct water supplies are evidence of the correctness of my present In fact, it was Themistocles who tore down the forests of Athens, to build his fleet. The Roman Imperial Public Baths destroyed what remained. or not, and that's why they've always got a scout sitting outside my bedroom window in the morning. Then there's the mail itself. People who get a lot of private mail even though they have the phone on, they're the kind of people that get things done, the doers of the world.

Invariably they have a neat, tidy home and a well-tended, attractive garden. In contrast, the sort of place where you're shoving a householder through a cobweb once a week tends to belong to the malcontent who feels the world is treating him unfairly There are patterns in the mail itself. I mean, you don't need to open a letter to know what's inside. Take old Mrs Dwyer. You wouldn't need to be a patron saint of postmen to know she's a God-fearing woman.

She's a pensioner, too, and grateful for the blessings the Lord has provided her. She doesn't subscribe to Pensioner's Voice, the voice of the militant pensioner. THE ADVENTURES OF CHRISTIAN ROSY CROSS (1986) Christian Rosy Cross was born in the year of the Great Schism, 1378. He was not like you or me. The birth: his mother, her face contorted and purple with exertion, pushes down.

Christian is still contained by his mother's womb but the AVISO endured two decade in the shadow of literary fame. David Foster, at the ace of 53. this week finally won the Miles Franklin Literary Award this week, for whkh he has been nominated nine times without oer making the short list until this sear. hosier made clear at the awards ceremony on Tuesday night that he feh he should hae been shortlisted for an esen more prestigious btcrary award, the Booker lYic. He esen quoted from the fantastic resiew his Litest and most ambitious ixncL The Glade uhin the Gnne.

retrised in Ihe limit Ijtcrurv Supplement, which stated: "David looter's important new nose! tempts us to feel that here the work of the novel is done so well that there can be no achievement beyond it" Unfortunately, the Australian book-buving public has not shared the enthusiasm that foster and many other serious authors and the judges of the Miles franklin Award feel about his work. The great question that hangs over I oster is whether his books are as good as his tough and brilliant mind. He seemed to be on the brink of a major career when his second novel. Ihe Pure I an I. won the Age Bowk of the Year Award, his third novel Motnine won the National Book Council Award, and the Nobel laureate Patrick White described him as Australia's most original writer.

But his subsequent 20 ears ere not to be glittering, and he lived on iiterarv grantv The S27.0O0 that comes with the Miles franklin Award will salve his constant mone problems and mas esen translate into better book sales and royalties. However, as The Times I'jtcrary Supplement warns. I oster is a "demanding" writer. He has published 10 novels since 1973 and not one of them has sold well, proof that the public's general tolerance for demanding authors is low. I sen so.

his publisher. Random House, has such confidence in his long-term value as a novelist that it has republished, through its Vintage imprint, nine of his 10 novels and his new epic ballad, out tomorrow. I oster did not want his first novel. tih Stwih West, republished. He has also written a book of poetry.

The Hertng Ala lan to. What sets I oster apart is the extraordinary range of his subjects, which in part reflects his eclectic skills, which range from his training as a scientist (he has a doctorate in inorganic chemistry to his background in martial arts (he has two advanced black belts in "hard-style" tae kwon do). His best and most important fictional character is D'Arcy D'OJiveres, the hero of Tktg Rotk and the narrator of he Glade Within the (imre. D'Arcy has been described by the Pulitier Prie-winning novelist E. Annie Proult as "one of the greatest comic characters in 20th century She offers the crucial advice rUKNOXHOTOKS as a midwife can see the colour of his hair.

It is black. "Push," says the midwife, "keep your elbows off the bed." Christian's mother is sixteen. It's herfirst child and her waters are intact. Christian could end up born in a caul, a highly propitious circumstance. TEST0STER0 (1987) "Oh don't be ridiculous! Everyone has the same intelligence as everyone else.

Your father sounds to me like a racist, sexist patriarch. I'm not sure I want him to be my son's godfather." "Oh he's no sexist, Judy; I've seen him watching the women's tennis on television." HITTING THE WALL (1989) Psychological factors, in the long run, were more important than physical factors. And the longer the run, the more important the psychological factors became. Youjust increased the length of the run till you found the right distance for yourself As you got older and wiser and weaker, you had to run further and further and further. MATES OF MARS (1991) Opposite, a young woman, kicking and screaming, is being dragged by her hair from one camp to another.

The young men pulling her are swigging at a 2-litre moselle bottle, which is hot stuff and banned "I can only apologise," says Jade SAAB Wl( MOONLITE (1981) The island silence, composed of birdsong, wind and sea, is suddenly vanquished by the spontaneous keening of a woman, that cry of rage and grief shunned by men in their death agony. In this cry, women express their contempt for the science, art, religion and politics of men. There is nothing better at stifling lust or Smalltalk. The priest, as drunk as the rest, moans with concern like a cow with a week-old calf, snoring to clear his throat of phlegm. He is weak, middle-aged, not equal to the drink he consumes; its ineluctable progress may be read in the vascular spider on his nose, and his gown, with its sleeves shiny through wear, and to the tips of his middle fingers.

PLUMBUM (1983) Ain't no power in the penis Ain't no power in the land Women restless for action Kids won't stick around Hear the old folk whingeing Nothin' in what they say Buy 'em a packet of soapflakes Wash their sins away DOG ROCK (1985) I knew it was going to rain today. A tourist once asked me did I look at the currawongs, to see if it was going to rain. No, I said, they look at me! They can tell from the expression on my face whether it's going to rain $42,300 SAAB 900 to Cyril, "for what we have done to your people. I think it's absolutely scandalous that they have been introduced to alcohol." "Ah," Cyril replies, "reckon dey gotta make up dere own minds dere. Same as de rest of us." "Scum, these Iwoorramurra," declares Steve.

"Knew that first time I set eyes on 'em. Wort sort o' man'd drink filthy Foster's, who could have a can o' sparklin' VB for the same price?" "Hard to work 'em out," admits Cyril. THE BALLAD OF ERINUNGARAH (1997) While red and black cicadas Add their stridulating song To the ceaseless play of rapid spray Could human voices sing so strong? Can human voices sing as long? Why should the glade 9000CSE $68,600 SAAB within the grove Yield to a city paved with gold? Finally, a quote from Castration, Foster's essay which explains some of the mysteries of the eunuch cults so important to The Glade Within The Grove and The Ballad of Erinungarah. The essay is in the latest issue of the literary quarterly Heat: The male testis, like the female ovary, develops from the embryonic gonad. Testosterone is required for male embryonic development; female development is independent of the ovary.

The basic human type is female: Moses, in Genesis, got it precisely wrong. But whereas the ovary is deeply implanted and well protected in the female, the male testis, even more than the male penis, seems designed for convenience of excision. Certainly the Neolithic Revolution could not have occurred were it not so easy to castrate herbivores. 9000 AERO $77.700 immsm -v I CONV $62,400 SAAB 9000CSCD $49,900 SAAS toe DOOR i m- SMfAXlFrE. i (02) 9567 0000.

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